Japanese/Chinese woodcut: Pathology of pterygium

Woodcut from the Chinese Ming (1368-1644) medical text Michuan yanke quanshu (Secretly Transmitted Compendium of Ophthalmology), in a Japanese edition published in Osaka in 1824 (7th year of the Bunsei era). It illustrates pterygium (nurou panjing). This is an external condition of the eye, attributed to attack by heat toxins rising from the spleen and stomach, fire flourishing in the heart and lung channels, and blockage of Qi and blood. In this condition, the membranes of the inner canthus gradually grow across the white of the eye until they encroach on the cornea, and may even cover the pupil. At the onset of the disease, it is uncomfortably itchy, and the membranes gradually lengthen when rubbed. In its chronic form, it is classed as a disease of excess, and in its acute form, as a disease of depletion. The excess type can be treated with picking therapy (tiao zhifa) to remove the pterygium, followed by the external application of drugs by insufflation. The depletion type cannot be treated with picking therapy, but only with drugs. For the internal treatment of pterygium, one can choose between drugs including zhizi shengqi tang (most wondrous gardenia decoction), longdancao san (Chinese gardenia powder), lengfeng tang (cold wind decoction) and sanhuang wan (three huang pills, containing rhubarb [dahuang], Baical Skullcap root [huangqin] and corktree bark [huangbai] as well as gardenia).

PICTURE TITLE: External ophthalmology: pterygium